'Magic mushroom' cheeses coming to The Grove, Sabato

Auckland 'Curd Nerd' Calum Hodgson and Kaikoura Cheese have produced cheese 'Magic Mushrooms' which will soon be on the menu at The Grove restaurant. Photo / Supplied

An Auckland cheese monger is bringing "magic mushrooms" to plates in Kiwi homes and upmarket city restaurant The Grove.

Calum Hodgson, who produced a batch of "heavy metal cheese" earlier this year, has helped create 400 goat's milk cheeses shaped like mushrooms which he has called Magic Mushrooms.

They're handmade and have a heavy Geotrichum rind, he said. The "caps" are sprinkled with activated charcoal.

Hodgson - who is also known as the Curd Nerd - told the Herald he saw similar cheeses at the Marche International de Rungis - a wholesale food market in Paris - and as a mushroom-lover wanted to create a New Zealand version.

"I think it's kind of like a little bit of Willy Wonka in the cheese world," he said.

Although there wasn't anything illegal in this kind of Magic Mushrooms, Hodgson said they could still possibly make consumers high.

"I would argue, and I'm biased, that all cheeses have a psychoactive placebo effect."

Daniel and Sarah Jenkins of Kaikoura Cheese agreed to make them and on Wednesday about 100 Magic Mushrooms will go on sale at Sabato in Mt Eden.

About half of them had tentatively sold and Hodgson expected the rest to be gone after about a week.

The rest of the batch will be served at Ben Bayly's restaurant The Grove and The Caretaker cocktail bar in Britomart.

Magic Mushrooms are made from the same raw ingredients as Tenara and had a fudgey taste, Hodgson said.

They could be served with truffle salt to give them a more mushroomy flavour and local chilli honey and berries made the cheeses "sing".

Josh Barlow, senior sous chef at The Grove, said he added Magic Mushrooms to the menu because he wanted to support local cheesemakers and the product was "something a little bit different".

The restaurant would serve them with homemade crackers.

"The cheese courses we try to keep really simple just to let the amazing cheeses speak for themselves," Barlow said.

He was expecting them to be popular with diners.

"A lot of our customers do finish their dinners with a cheese course so it's quite easy to either talk them into it or say 'hey try something that's not going to be around very long."